Ordinary Time - Week 10c
Widow of Nain
(From Conversation with God, Fernandez Carvajal)The Gospel of today's Mass enables us to contemplate Jesus arriving in a small town called Nain, accompanied by his disciples and followed by a large crowd. It was about six miles south-east of Nazareth and five miles from Capharnaum.
Just inside the gate of the place the crowd accompanying Our Lord crossed the path of a procession of people who were carrying to his burial the only son of a widow. According to Jewish custom, they were carrying the body, which was wrapped in linen, on a bier or stretcher. The procession, led by his mother, was made up of a large number of people from the city.
The group coming into Nain stopped in front of the dead man. Jesus went up to the mother, who was weeping for her son, and He took pity on her. Jesus crosses paths again with a crowd of people. He could have passed by or waited until they called him. But He didn't. He took the initiative, because He was moved by a widow's sorrow. She had just lost all she had, her son.
The evangelist explains that Jesus was moved. Perhaps He even showed signs of it, as when Lazarus died. Jesus Christ was not, and is not, insensitive to suffering. Christ knows He is surrounded by a crowd which will be awed by the miracle and will tell the story all over the countryside. But He does not act artificially, merely to make an effect. Quite simply He is touched by that woman's suffering and cannot keep from consoling her. So He goes up to her and says, 'Do not weep'. It is like saying, 'I don't want to see your crying; I have come on earth to bring joy and peace.' And then comes the miracle, the sign of the power of Christ who is God. But first came his compassion, an evident sign of the tenderness of the heart of Christ the man. He laid his hand on the young man's body and ordered him to get up. And He gave him to his mother.
The miracle is at the same time a good example of the concern we should feel for other people's misfortunes. We must learn from Jesus. In order to have a heart like his we have to turn in the first place to prayer; we should ask Our Lord to give us a good heart, capable of having compassion for other people's pain. Only with such a heart can we realize that the true balm for the suffering and anguish in this world is love, charity. All other consolations hardly even have a temporary effect and leave behind them bitterness and despair.
We should ask ourselves today whether we know how to love everybody who crosses our path in this life, whether we have a real concern for their misfortunes, a concern that leads us to act in an effective way; thus, when we come to our examination of conscience we will find in the course of it that we have many acts of charity and of mercy we can offer to God.